1909] The Ottawa Naturalist. 215 



DR. FLETCHER AS A LEADER. 



By Dr. H. M. Ami. 



It is with great difficulty and diffidence that I attempt this 

 evening to describe to you Dr. James Fletcher as a Leader. 

 The painful loss we have sustained is too recent, and too great, 

 to permit me to even attempt to do justice to him. His all- 

 round personality, genial, kind and affable ways, his utterances 

 and activities are so deeply imprinted upon us by the years of 

 intimate and constant relations that their full living reality 

 cannot be connected with the unutterable pain we experience 

 in the loss we have sustained. 



It is only three weeks ago to-day that we followed to their 

 last resting place the mortal remains of our dear departed 

 leader and friend. 



Many years and many times we had followed him in those 

 pleasant paths and bye-ways where the Trilliums and Ginseng 

 flourish, where the Spring-beauty and Hepaticas thrive, and 

 where the rare orchids hide their fringed or fantastic blossoms. 

 Suddenly, when we least expected it, he who had been our 

 leader in botany, in entomology, in conchology, in so many 

 and interesting branches of natural history; he who had 

 banded us together and had founded our Club; he who had 

 been the cheery friend of every member of the Club for twenty- 

 nine years ; was taken from us and cut off in the prime of man- 

 hood. We mourn his loss to-day not alone for what he was 

 to the Club from its very inception — a constant inspiration 

 and a devoted Leader but, also, for what he was to each of 

 us individually — a friend, an example, an ideal man, a man with 

 wide sympathies and firm convictions, fond of knowledge and 

 of truth, of a tender, patient and winsome disposition, as well 

 as of a resourceful nature. His sweet, wholesome influence, his 

 truly unselfish nature, and his beneficent example must ever 

 be a light which will radiate in our community with increasing 

 power as years roll on. His great spirit permeated ever\- branch 

 of the Club's work from its earliest days, and for sound counsel 

 and critical advice we naturally and invariably turned to him. 

 Mav his life and work be ever kept before our eyes and minds. 



What a privilege to have knowm Dr Fletcher! 



He was an ideal Leader, and it is of him as such that I 

 liave been asked to speak to you to-night. To be a Leader one 

 must be a seer. He had his visions and in the pursuit of his 

 high ideal Dr. Fletcher fairly drew us along. His great faith, 

 in all that tended to the ideal, the noble, the good, and the true, 

 -which was so manifest in him, made him look far into the 



